


the situation's a lot more nuanced than that

by skatingsplits



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/F, apparently i'm soft who knew, but there's pining, the crazy ex girlfriend AU nobody asked for, with a dash more common sense and healthier behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-12 00:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20163019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatingsplits/pseuds/skatingsplits
Summary: When Paris begrudgingly lifted her head from the assorted debris of Tom Ford lipsticks, prescription bottles and out-of-date nutrition bars rattling around in the bottom of her bag, she was expecting to see a casual cocktail party acquaintance. Or maybe a Stepfordy friend of her mother’s, or an old law school frenemy. What she really wasn’t expecting was Rory Gilmore. Rory Gilmore, the girl who’d been the proverbial thorn in her side for her last three years at prep school. Rory Gilmore, with whom Paris had been furiously, unrequitedly and secretly in love from the ages of sixteen to eighteen. Rory Gilmore, who she hadn’t seen since their high school graduation when Paris was just starting to come to terms with her own inherent sapphicism. If you forgot about the cap and gown, you could have easily believed that Rory had stepped right out of the graduation picture of the two of them that Paris couldn’t quite bring herself to delete from her iCloud.





	the situation's a lot more nuanced than that

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. look, just roll with it, I don't know what I'm doing either. 
> 
> 2\. warning for non-explicit mentions of suicidal thoughts and prescription drug abuse, along the lines of (but probably milder than) those found in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. also some generally insensitive/dismissive attitudes towards mental health problems because Paris Geller is Paris Geller.

“This is fine. This is fine. This is more than fine, this is fantastic, this is objectively fantastic.” 

Well, muttering to herself like a meth-ed up hobo in the middle of a Manhattan sidewalk was probably not objectively fantastic. But being offered a senior partnership in her law firm at only thirty-two years old, getting the thing that she’d visualised and manifested and The Secret-ed ever since she’d managed to decide between Yale Law and Harvard Medical School, that was fantastic. Objectively, definitely, _obviousl_y fantastic. So what if she was having heart palpitations that would have put a forty-stone diabetic to shame? So what if she’d sprinted down all twenty floors of the high-rise building and was now fumbling in her bag for a little orange pill box instead of instead of immediately demanding to negotiate her contract and cracking open a case of Dom Perignon? Everybody probably reacted like this, it was just the shock. After all, if something didn’t make you want to lie down in the middle of the Manhattan sidewalk and wail until a passer-by took you out with a particularly sharp stiletto to the heart, it was probably not worth having! No pain, no gain, right? Trite but true. Paris might have been raised by parents who would have rather jumped out of their penthouse window than adorn its walls with motivational posters, but they hadn’t needed tacky artwork to get the point across; if you weren’t feeling at least a little suicidal, you probably weren’t trying hard enough. 

And nobody could have ever accused Paris of not trying hard enough. She was in the office at six every morning while the other junior partners were still in tequila-induced mini comas, she hadn’t made it home for Thanksgiving in seven years, she’d spent an entire cocktail party arguing with Nancy Pelosi about squatters’ rights and won, for God’s sake! She deserved this, it was exactly what was supposed to happen, all she had to do was take another Xanax and go back upstairs and everything would be fine, everything would be fantas- 

“Paris? Paris Geller?” Oh, great. Now there was a witness to her little Frances Farmer episode _ and _ she was going to have to not burst into hysterical tears for the length of an inane conversation with someone who she’d probably rather grind under the heel of her shoe than give the time of day. When Paris begrudgingly lifted her head from the assorted debris of Tom Ford lipsticks, prescription bottles and out-of-date nutrition bars rattling around in the bottom of her bag, she was expecting to see a casual cocktail party acquaintance. Or maybe a Stepfordy friend of her mother’s, or an old law school frenemy. What she really wasn’t expecting was Rory Gilmore. 

Rory Gilmore, the girl who’d been the proverbial thorn in her side for her last three years at prep school. Rory Gilmore, with whom Paris had been furiously, unrequitedly and secretly in love from the ages of sixteen to eighteen. Rory Gilmore, who she hadn’t seen since their high school graduation when Paris was just starting to come to terms with her own inherent sapphicism. Rory Gilmore, who Paris had imagined a meeting with a thousand times over the last fourteen years; in every single one of those slightly fevered daydreams, Paris had been sophisticated and successful enough to make Amal Clooney weep with jealousy, usually with a faceless willowy brunette on her arm and a superior smile on her face as she pretended not to recognise any of the old Chilton classmates that she’d pointedly refused to friend on Facebook. In precisely none of them had she been a sweating, benzodiazepined wreck slumped against the side of a skyscraper and talking to herself like a rejected auditionee for a modern-dress production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In precisely all of them, Rory had looked exactly as she did now; fresh-faced, beaming and ridiculously, irritatingly beautiful. If you forgot about the cap and gown, you could have easily believed that Rory had stepped right out of the graduation picture of the two of them that Paris couldn’t quite bring herself to delete from her iCloud. 

In vain, Paris did her best to summon up one of the witticisms that came so easily when she was lying under her gravity blanket and trying to daydream herself into a night-terrorless sleep. Instead, the only thing that managed to come out of her mouth was: 

“You... you don’t live here.” Nice one, Paris, real stellar observational skills. Margaret Mead would have been so proud. She hadn’t even managed to sound icy or poised; the words had tripped over each other as they tripped off her tongue and come out as a garbled string of nothing that gave the impression that she wasn’t even in possession of the power of speech, let alone a first class law degree and a standing invitation for dinner at Ayanna Pressley’s. Nevertheless, Rory seemed to have known what she’d meant. The good-natured laugh that bubbled out of those perfectly-glossed lips instantly brought back a hundred deliberately-buried teenage memories- shared eye-rolls at the One Tree Hill-wannabe antics of Madeline and Louise, gentle teasing about how many copies of The Art of War it was reasonable for one person to own, actually having someone who would laugh and not say “gesundheit” after Paris made a joke about Aeschylus- and Paris had to forcibly stop her jaw from literally dropping. 

“I do, actually! Well, not _ here _,” Rory gestured to the surrounding chromium skyscrapers, still smiling broadly as though she was genuinely pleased to see Paris which, taking all the evidence into consideration, just didn’t seem feasible. “I think I’d have to sell all my vital organs before I could afford to live in Manhattan and then I’d just be a weird skinsuit who probably wouldn’t need an apartment anyway. But I’ve lived in Brooklyn for the last three years!” 

From a rational perspective, that would have been the point in the conversation where a normal human being would have made some sort of response. Just an “mhmm” would have probably been fine, maybe she could have even gotten away with merely nodding her head. Instead, Paris stood still and silent, her mouth still hanging open like a particularly unattractive hippopotamus at feeding time. A tiny furrow appeared in the perfect porcelain skin of Rory’s brow but she pushed on, apparently unperturbed by Paris’s sudden infection of complete and utter idiocy. 

“I know, I know; you can’t get any more cliché than an aspiring writer living in Brooklyn. And yes, my apartment is tiny and I’m still not sure if the exposed brick was a design choice or if the builder got his big break on Broadway before he finished the plastering, but it isn’t all bad!” 

On a logical level, Paris knew that there was very little physical difference between the way her heart was hammering as she listened to Rory ramble on about the hipstery delights of Brooklyn and the sick thudding in her chest as she’d fled into the New York streets less than ten minutes ago. But on a... well, a not so logical level, it felt like as vast a difference as the one between her Cucinelli ankle boots that made her feel like she was permanently dancing on tiny knives and Rory’s faded, comfy-looking high-tops. And maybe it was that hammering (as opposed to a complete psychotic break) that prompted her to interrupt her old foe in the middle of a description of some disgustingly twee-sounding East Flatbush bakery and its out-of-this-world croissants. 

“Do you want to get a coffee?” On the plus side, at least her ability to enunciate clearly had apparently been restored. If anything, Paris’s diction was a little too crisp; she sounded more like she was interrogating a hostile witness than asking her former not-quite-flame to grab a beverage. On the negative side, Rory’s face rearranged itself into a regretful expression, blue Bambi eyes blinking over at Paris in a way that surely couldn’t have been legal, and Paris felt every single cell in her body flush white hot with embarrassment. Of course Rory wouldn’t want to socialise with the girl who’d been persistently foul to her for almost the entirety of their all-too-brief acquaintance, with the fucking social reject who spent her miniscule number of free evenings pouring over old copies of the American Journal of Trial Advocacy and hadn’t gotten laid since Cameron Diaz was still topping the box office. 

“Oh Paris, I’d love to, I really would but actually...” Here it came, the convoluted excuse that would just make both of them uncomfortable since apparently it wasn’t socially acceptable to just tell someone you found their entire being completely repulsive anymore. “Actually, I’m moving tomorrow. Back to Connecticut.” 

Oh. Well, as excuses go, that was a pretty good one. And sure, Paris knew that grabbing a drink with her was probably an off-putting enough prospect to make someone actually change zip code but Rory’s slightly shame-faced expression didn’t indicate that she was making this up on the fly. 

“The whole Christiane Amanpour thing is a lot harder than it looks, you know? What am I saying, of course you don’t know. You’re Paris Geller! You eat success for breakfast.” Rory waved her arms about with a considerable amount of dramatic flair and, with her fingers still closed around a jumbo bottle of Xanax, it was all Paris could do to smile weakly. “But the big city can be tough on those of us who are only armed with a measly little BA and a plucky attitude.” Adopting a voice more suited to a trilby-wearing private eye in a cheesy black-and-white movie, Rory smiled as she spoke but even Paris and what her last girlfriend had described as her astonishing lack of anything resembling emotional intelligence could tell that there was real discomfort lurking below the jovial surface. 

“But hey, let me give you my number!” Rory held out her hand and for a brief, wild second before she grounded herself in reality again, Paris’s instinct was to slip her own into it. Instead, she silently passed her phone over, noting vaguely that she hadn’t managed to contribute more than a handful of words to the entire conversation. And none of those had been more than two syllables. Maybe Rory would think she’d been hit by lightning and turned into a braindead mute at some point in the last fourteen years and take pity on her. Or maybe she’d just think that Paris was a rude, frigid bitch who still hadn’t managed to remove the stick from up her ass. 

“We can get coffee the next time I’m in the city, okay?” Rory continued. “Or, hey, give me a buzz if you’re ever in Stars Hollow!” 

“Stars Hollow?” Well done, Paris, that was two whole words one after the other. Practically Warren G. Harding levels of loquaciousness. 

“Yeah, my podunk little home town! I was kidding, really, I don’t think you and your scarily incredible outfit would be very likely to find your way to Stars Hollow.” Again, Rory’s mouth curved into a smile and Paris really, really needed her to stop doing that if she was ever going to manage to form a full sentence again. “Although actually, you did visit a couple of times, you probably don’t remember.” 

Oh, Paris remembered. Rory in her ugly, boxy, blue Chilton blazer, happier than Paris had ever seen her as she skipped through litter-free streets and danced around neverending stacks of hay bales. Well, maybe there were a few more hay bales and smiling yokels in Paris’s memory than there had been in reality but the point still stood. Paris remembered. 

“You were totally obsessed with trying to hunt down its seedy underbelly for an article for the Franklin.” If Rory’s smile had put Paris in desperate need of some kind of stabilising medication, her laughter was something else entirely. You could probably still get a lobotomy somewhere in New York, right? If you had extenuating circumstances? If you walked into some back-alley clinic and said “hey, apparently I’m hopelessly, irretrievably in love with my old high school frenemy who I haven’t seen in a decade and a half, is about to move out of state and is probably straighter than a plank of wood into the bargain”? They’d take pity on you and slice that frontal lobe up like a smoked ham, wouldn’t they? 

“Sure, truckers and cathouses,” was her response. Four whole words this time, even if they did sound like the name of a particularly depressing alt-country band. 

“That’s right, truckers and cathouses!” Rory giggled and Paris’s head hurt. “I kept trying to tell you that Stars Hollow doesn’t actually have a seedy underbelly, or an underbelly of any kind, really, but nothing was getting in the way of that Paris Geller persistence. Which I guess is why I’m the one moving back in with my mother and you’re...” 

She trailed off, waving a hand in Paris’s general direction. What? What could Rory possibly be seeing that she thought compared favourably to herself? 

“Actually, that’s part of it, you know? I’m just so tired of everybody scowling on the subway and keeping my hand on the pepper spray every time I find myself in a stairwell and going to horrible parties where all anyone wants to talk about is vaginal steaming and high cortisol levels. It’s like... people at home are actually happy. And not just pretending for the ‘gram.” Rory handed Paris her phone back with a rueful smile, shaking her head slightly so that a strand of dark brown hair fell in front of her eyes. “You probably think that’s pathetic, huh?” 

If you’d asked her twenty minutes ago, Paris would have enthusiastically confirmed that yes, she did think it was pathetic. If you wanted to make something out of yourself, you didn't go running back home to your storybook small town at the first sign of hardship. And if you factored something as nonsensical as happiness into your decision-making processes, you didn't deserve to be successful. Right then and there, however, something stopped her from opening her mouth and telling Rory exactly what she thought of people who got going when the going got tough. It must have been the shock at seeing her old foe-and-or-friend again, that was all it was. Nothing to do with the six different briefcases and the 80-page, firmly-binding employment contract waiting for her upstairs. 

“Hey, look, I should really get going. I’ve gotta try and figure out how to get three years’ worth of extra books into two tote bags, and I’m sure you have a hundred important things to do that don’t involve standing around in the street talking to me!” 

Of course she did. Not least of which was turning her ass around, going back upstairs and gracefully accepting the position for which she’d worked the aforementioned ass off every single day for the last... well, basically forever, if you wanted to get all dramatic about it. And yet, when Rory had enveloped her in an all-too-brief hug, reaffirmed that they would have “a proper catch-up" soon and gambolled off into the middle of the faceless masses like a surprisingly un-irritating baby gazelle, Paris did no such thing. 

Instead, she stood quite still, eyes fixed on her phone screen like it was about to self-destruct before she could memorise its coded message. When she’d put her number into Paris’s contacts, Rory had listed her name as “Rory Gilmore (Former Nemesis)”. And although her heart was still racing in her chest like Lance Armstrong before they stopped him doping, Paris smiled, turned on her heel and started walking; for the first time she could remember, without a clear destination in mind. 


End file.
